Nicholas Barry

When my boss and I sat down with Marco* to talk to him about his performance, he didn’t meet our eyes. His shoulders drooped, and he slumped in his chair. After eight months on the job, we told him, he still required intensive hand-holding on simple tasks, even tasks he had been shown before. Steve, one of the most outstanding interns we have ever had, spent much of his time walking Marco through tasks. We felt that it was time for Marco to move on to other opportunities. We talked it over with him, and at the end of the meeting he slunk quietly out of the room.

Even though I was frustrated at the amount of attention Marco required, it was tough for me to fire him. I could see how dispirited he was. While being fired from a paid job has a bigger impact on your finances, being fired from a volunteer position carries a special kind of humiliation: it’s embarrassing to be told that your help isn’t wanted, even for free. Knowing how it makes the intern feel is what makes it so unpleasant for me.

“You can’t fire an intern.” Daniel, a friend of mine, told me. “They’re working for free!” He wasn’t joking. This is an attitude I’ve heard more than once, but I didn’t expect to hear it from Daniel, who manages employees in his job. It usually comes from people who don’t have experience managing, and who seem to view internships as a form of charity. I believe differently. The strength of our internship program is that we treat interns like employees. We give them real responsibility, allow them to work on real projects, and expect real work from them. We never ask them to make coffee or put quarters in parking meters. That means we need to fire interns who aren’t doing well in our office. But that doesn’t make it easy.

Steve and I spent hours training Marco. As a manager, my primary duty is to empower the interns to do meaningful, useful work for our office, and it’s hard for me to reverse direction on an intern. Up to the moment I fired Marco, I was trying to help him. Once I fire him, I’m shunting him out of our office. I don’t agree with my friend Daniel, but I completely understand the emotions that drive that belief.

I reason with myself that I can only do so much for an intern – Marco needs to reach a certain threshold of performance, or our internship program isn’t sustainable. I’m willing to invest time and effort in an intern, but the investment has to pay off at some point. With Marco, it didn’t.

Don't feel bad about firing interns. They might be working for free, but if their bad abilities slow operations down , then they are costing you something. The same problem exists on political campaigns, expect its even harder. You can't fire a volunteer, you literally can't. They could bad mouth you to voters, they might be family to the candidate, etc. On campaigns you just have to sell them on something that isn't necessary and is really easy - count the number of flyers we have.

But don't feel bad about firing interns. You are spending your time, expertise, and advice. Some people charge for their time, expertise and advice. So in if someone is wasting your time, expertise and advice, fire them.

Thanks, Jim. That sounds tough - I hadn't thought about how things might be different on a campaign.

I'm reminded of a story I heard about the Manhattan Project. A respected UK science adviser visited, and told them he thought dynamite would be more effective than plastic explosives for detonating the initial explosion for the nuclear bomb. Robert Oppenheimer thought the idea was stupid, but couldn't say so because of the adviser's high position in the UK government. He even felt compelled to investigate the suggestion because of the close alliance between the US and the UK. So he took all the scientists he felt were dead wood - people who hadn't contributed anything, or who reduced the productivity of others - and put them all on a project to investigate the merits of using dynamite instead of plastic explosives. Two birds with one stone!

I've had to do this once or twice with interns who I really couldn't fire, but who weren't doing much for our office. It's usually a task that IS useful, but is pretty menial, and which I wouldn't assign to any intern other than one who is pretty useless.

Reply

Carl

6/17/2012 03:53:19 pm

The person you fired is probably better off. In general, unpaid internships are illegal and in violation of labor laws.

Carl, the Department of Labor regulations on unpaid internships apply to for-profit companies, but not to non-profits or government. We're a government office, so our internships are legal. Otherwise, you're right - very few unpaid internships offered by for-profits actually meet the legal requirements, which are pretty strict.

Whether the intern was better off or not? In his case, I think you're right. I generally feel that if someone is a poor match for a position, it's generally a mutually poor match.